


I'm Searching for Something I Can't Reach

by mystrongestsuit



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Anorexia, Basically just about Ethan's eating disorder, Eating Disorders, Ethan-Centric, Ethan/Benji if you squint, Trigger Warning for EDs!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 05:44:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15679188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystrongestsuit/pseuds/mystrongestsuit
Summary: Ethan Hunt was many things. Reckless, protective to a fault with a savior complex strong enough to power every piece of tech Benji owned. Entirely too willing to endanger himself for the people he cared about. Idealistic, handsome, infuriatingly charming, the list went on and on.But one thing Ethan Hunt was not was weak.





	I'm Searching for Something I Can't Reach

**Author's Note:**

> just a catharsis, projection type thing. it seemed weird to me that no one had written anything like this yet, ethan just seems like the kinda person you could write this for easily. I don't know the movies well at all, though. comments and criticism welcome, if you also have disordered eating (I do as well) and u find something inaccurate let me know and ill try to fix it.
> 
> huge trigger warning for eating disorders! 
> 
> title from "ghost" by halsey.

Ethan Hunt was many things. Reckless, protective to a fault with a savior complex strong enough to power every piece of tech Benji owned. Entirely too willing to endanger himself for the people he cared about. Idealistic, handsome, infuriatingly charming, the list went on and on.  
But one thing Ethan Hunt was not was weak.

After all, how could he be? He exercised frequently, hadn’t touched fast food in seven years, and had absolutely no problem at all pushing his body to its very limits.

 

And that was the problem.

At four o’clock, an alarm rang out into the cold air (Ethan slept with the thermostat turned just on the other side of pneumonia. It only took him three weeks to get into the habit of shivering himself to sleep). With a slight hiss, the agent pushed himself out of bed and in the direction of his closet, where he pulled on his running clothes. Stopping by the bathroom, he brushed his teeth and avoided eye contact with the mirror until the last second, finally meeting his own eyes and grimacing at the sight of his body in baggy sweatpants and a shirt. Pulling up the shirt, Ethan ran a hand over his stomach and pushed back the nausea that rose in his belly. With one last hateful glance toward his reflection, he slipped out of the bathroom and steeled himself for his daily several-hour run. 

On the verge of collapsing on the side of the road, Ethan finally stopped for a break, swallowing a few sips of water until he felt steady again. He debated doing a couple more miles for a moment, pushed back into memories of his early twenties, when he could barely run a mile. He felt weak then, yes, in a way, with the vulnerability of inexperience, but now… Now he can race after criminals for miles without stopping, he can beat almost anyone he comes up against in a fight, he’s gone through more hours of prison torture than he can count. But he has never felt more fragile.  
He shakes his head and pushes off into a sprint.

It’s eight in the morning when Ethan walks back into his apartment, drenched in sweat, with a growling stomach and a dizzy head he knows is from a severe combination of malnutrition, over-exercise, and exhaustion. He addresses exactly one of these issues. Undressing and about to step into the shower, he pauses to pull the scale out from under his sink. It’s habit now, an unconscious fact of Ethan’s routine. Wake up. Run. Torture himself with a number he knows, scientifically and reasonably and medically, is lower than it should be, not higher. Not average. It should be fine. That doesn’t stop him from feeling that there is something undeniably wrong. He grits his teeth and steps into the water, warm because he knows his muscles need all the help they can get and he can’t risk compromising a mission. A voice in the back of his head tells him that everything Ethan does will already put his teammates in danger, so why bother with the luxury of hot water? He almost listens, almost turns back to the faucet, but sheer exhaustion keeps him pinned to the shower wall.  
Finally, he forces himself out, knowing by instinct now what is just enough time for him to him to get dressed for his sporadic Ethan-finally-doesn’t-have-a-field-mission late mornings with Benji. Just enough time to get dressed, just enough to knock back a black coffee, just enough to check his email. But never enough to eat breakfast. It’s an excuse he tells himself when the guilt of what he does everyday starts to creep in. 

Just as Ethan finishes smoothing down his hair in the mirror, he hears a knock on the door and a familiar British accent yell something about pastries and shoving them up someone’s ass if he was left outside any longer. Fuck.  
Ethan’s head swims with numbers as he walks to the door. Big numbers. So many big numbers. Sugar and fat and calories and god, Ethan would almost rather be in handcuffs and chains right now then here, with Benji, the one fucking person he can never say no to. The one person who knows when he’s lying and when he’s pretending to be someone he’s not, when he’s saying he’s fine and when he really is, when he’s doing something good and when he needs to be stopped. And Ethan really cannot stop right now, he can’t. He feels more breakable with every second, like a glass ball spinning on an axis and the second someone touches it it’ll shatter. He blinks hard and opens the door for Benji.

“Fuckin’ hell mate, you look like you haven’t slept in weeks”, Benji says upon seeing Ethan’s face.  
Ethan chuckles, swallowing back the vomit in the back of his throat as his eyes zero in on the bag of donuts in Benji’s hands.  
“I’ve been better”, he says with a sheepish smile, waving Benji in. “Haven’t been sleeping great lately.”  
“Well, of fuckin' course, it’s cold as hell in here.”  
Ethan winces and walks past the kitchen island to turn the thermostat a couple degrees hotter.  
“So, how was your morning? All normal, I assume. Some superhuman athletic feat, I’m sure, then what? Spent twenty minutes in the bathroom stroking your ego?”, Benji teases, opening the bag of pastries and grabbing a plate out of Ethan’s drawer.  
Ethan barely hears him over the numbers and the noise in his head, like he’s got a white noise tape playing on repeat but someone’s screaming softly over it, drowning out everything else. And Ethan doesn’t like this, he’s a fucking professional agent, he’s trained to do the job and play the part and shut everything else down when he needs to, but he’s just. Scared. And that’s not right, because he knows how to not be scared and he knows how to handle pain, and on top of all that he promised Benji he would protect him and protecting him is not what this is, but it’s too late because he’s muttering, “I’m sorry, I have to go,” with wild eyes and running out the door. 

Benji finds him in a stairwell half an hour later. He’s subdued, shaking, and when Benji steps into his vision he flinches and reaches for a gun that he left in his apartment. When Benji steps closer the other man backs up against the wall and lets his eyes flit to the nearest possible exits.  
“Ethan. I was alone in your apartment.”  
Ethan’s heart drops into his stomach, his head is screaming, he chokes out the words, “What did you find?” 

Turns out hacking a scale’s last recorded measurements is no problem for a professional computer genius. Ethan has lost forty pounds in ten months and Benji demands, at the very least, the comfort of conducting his own medical exam in Ethan’s cold apartment, mostly because Benji knows for a fact the other man could severely incapacitate any nurse or doctor he wanted to. And even though Benji doesn’t think he wants to, he’s also never seen Ethan look this lost before. This broken. So he goes with the safe choice and makes Ethan undress to his underwear in the main room with all the blinds shut. The bedroom felt too intimate and Benji saw the sheer panic in Ethan’s expression when the agent glanced toward the bathroom mirror, so. The main room it was. 

It takes all Benji has in him not to gasp when he sees Ethan. His ribs poke out, he’s lost enough visible muscle mass that Benji wonders how he manages to get through missions, he’s pale and his muscles won’t stop twitching. Benji coughs a little and tries his best not to let his indifferent expression slip. He doesn’t want Ethan reading too much into what he’s doing, but of course it’s Ethan and he catches everything.  
“I know, Benji, I don’t look like the perfect agent, but I’m working on it-”, says Ethan quietly, but Benji interrupts him. “How, Ethan? What exactly are you doing?” Benji’s voice shakes a little.  
Ethan’s answer doesn’t come, when he opens his mouth he finds he has nothing to say and no more excuses to give. Benji shakes his head, blinks, walks to the fridge and opens it.  
Apples, lettuce, chicken. Almond milk, unsweetened and sugar-free. His cabinets are empty, save for coffee mix and a couple containers of multivitamins. Laxatives.  
Ethan sits, motionless, on the couch. Benji drops down next to him, watches for the glazed look in his eye that Benji has come to recognize as a crippling pain Ethan would never talk about, and he takes the other man’s hand in his. His nails are brittle and discolored. Ethan leans in a little, which Benji knows from years of friendship is the closest Ethan gets to asking for the affection he needs, and Benji wraps an arm around him. He winces when he feels Ethan’s ribs against the pads of his fingers. 

“Come home with me, Ethan. The team needs you. I need you.” 

Ethan stays silent, but he draws himself closer into Benji’s chest. Benji wonders when the last time the other man got a good night’s sleep was as he rubs circles into the bones of Ethan’s back. At some point, Ethan falls asleep, and then Benji must too, because when he wakes up Ethan is standing over him with a shaky smirk. There’s a duffel bag in the corner of the room.  
“Good morning”, he says quietly. A long pause. “That invitation still open?”, he asks in the voice he only uses when he’s convincing criminals he knows what he’s doing when Benji knows for a fact he’s bullshitting every single thing.  
“Always.”


End file.
